News items

On 1 September 1985 the Centre for Genetic Resourcesthe Netherlands was founded. This centre is to conserve and describe the valuable collections existing in the Netherlands, to extend these and, where necessary, found new ones. Government and private institutions will work in close cooperation. The first director is Dr J. J. Hardon and his address is Droevendaalsesteeg 1, Wageningen. We are certain that this Centre will florish.


NEWS ITEMS
SEX STUDY TABOO IN juries TIIGII.-Sex education will not explore the problem of reproduction beyond the level of insects, flowers, and birds in the junior high schools of New York City. TEACHERS KEEP FIT BY CITY'S couRSES.-Because the school curriculum is ever changing, the school board of New York City has set up free classes of instruction after school to keep its teachers alert.
SPECIAL EDUCATION  lege, Columbia University, insists that teachers should try to discover the meanings of some of the &dquo;omnibus&dquo; words they use in the classroom, such as &dquo;cornmunity planning,&dquo; &dquo;cooperative study,&dquo; &dquo;integrated program,&dquo; etc. These words need to be interpreted to be meaningful. GEOGRAPHY TAUGHT BY JIGSAW METHOD.-An invention which will stimulate the study of geography was contributed by Ralph H. Wilson, vice chairman of the Davidson County, North Carolina Board of Education, in the form of a jigsaw puzzle map of North Carolina. It shows the political subdivisions, the one hundred counties, county seats, lakes, rivers, mountain ranges, and sounds.
DEAIOCRACY VITAL TO CIIILDREN.-0nly in a democracy can we consider the individuality of the child, Arnold Gesell, of Yale University, declares; and Frank J. O'Brien, director of the Bureau of Child Guidance of the Board of Education of New York, urges educators to adopt the attitude of doctors and nurses of diagnosing and understanding the child before trying to teach him. CIIILDREN WITH I. Q. ABOVE 150 may be too smart for their own good. The most fortunate range of intelligence from the standpoint of personal happiness is from 130 I. Q. to 150 I. Q. Those children with an 1. Q. above this limit find themselves outcasts among those of their own age, and they develop a feeling of ph,ysical and social inferiority to older children whom their mental tastes demand. &dquo;EYE&dquo; LIGHTING FOR GLEBCOE'S NEW HIGH SCIIOOL.-The new high school at Glencoe, Illinois, will have a controlled lighting system, new to this part of the country. When natural light fails through dusk or cloudiness, illumination thermostats automatically will turn on room lights. This device will be au economy, it is thought, for lights are often turned on during a cloudy morning and left on throughout the day. NEW EXPERIMENTS IN KANSAS HIGH SCHOOL.-There has always been dissatisfaction with debate work in high schools, and many schools are trying to find a substitute for debate. Kansas is trying an interesting experiment in a discussion conference. Any high school in the state may send representatives. The students who attend the conference are divided into groups of six.
These six students meet together in a semicircle with the leader, who starts the discussion.
DR. D'ODDS SKEPTICAL ON SOCIAL SCIENCEs.-BHarold W. Dodds, president of Princeton University, states that the so-called social sciences are not sci-ences, if we were to compare them with the natural sciences. He says that scientific research has not helped the man on the street in deciding how he should cast his vote, nor has it given an objective answer to such problems as the depression, nationalism versus internationalism, the future effects of the Munich Pact, etc.
PERMANENT STAFF AND BETTER FACILITIES FOR GROWNUPS SUGGESTED.&horbar; Since 1934, the evening and day classes of the New York City schools have grown from 23,311 to 40,852. Because of the influx of refugees and the rise of new problems, it is held that the evening classes should be smaller, more teachers allotted, and the studies revised. It is proposed that the formation of continuous all-day schools for adults would be of benefit to all the students and to the community.
APPRECIATION OF VALUES PUT FIRST.&horbar;Harry Kelso Eversull, president of Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio, declares that the appreciation of values is the fundamental aim of the entire education process. He says, &dquo;One's appreciation of values determines the nature and character of his ideals and the levels of his morals. Ideals, like values, do not hist save only as they dwell in persons or in things. When we observe truth, beauty, and goodness personified in some individual, or embodied in some human relationship, they become for us an ideal.&dquo; 'COOPERATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND SCHOOL.&horbar;Barrett T,owe, superintendent of schools, Wessington Springs, .South Dakota, believes that cooperation between school and church reaps valuable rewards to all involvedthe student, the church, the home, and the community. &dquo;No one,&dquo; he say,~, &dquo;can call himself educated who has not developed the spiritual phases of his personality. Nor can one call himself educated who has not developed a reasonably satisfying and constructive philosophy of life. In the development of this philosophy, religion plays perhaps the most important part.&dquo; A FALLACY TAKEN FOR GRANTED.-That &dquo;bright&dquo; children talce care of themselves has too often been taken for granted. Unfortunately, tliey, too, are subject to personality and social maladjustments, Benjamin B. Greenberg, assistant superintendent of the New York City schools, points ont. The following are a few examples he gives, illustrating maladjustments: &dquo;Some, we have found, develop protective deafness as an escape from intolerable boredom of drill; some become truants; some come into serious conHict with teachers and develop a definite antagonism to school as they experience it.&dquo; -To FORMULATE CIIILDREN'S STANDARDS FOR JUDGING FILMS.-The National Education Association, at its last convention, voted unanimously to (1) develop new units of classroom instruction in the critical appreciation of motion pictures in all secondary subjects from the junior high school to the junior college; (2) to formulate children's standards for judging movies; (3) to evolve methods for teaching motion-picture standards; (4) to cooperate with theaters and community committees in an effort to unify programs and to suggest suitable programs for the family; (5) to oppose legislation which attempts to solve the cinema problem by artificial censorship; (6) to publish lists of films worthy of discussion at various levels, from the junior high school to the junior college.
HiGH-scHOOL CLASS BUILDS A $5,500 HOME.-The Champaign Senior High School, Champaign, Illinois, house project vocational building trades class is considered unique. This class was planned and carried through by a committee made up not only of members of the school sta,ff but also of the labor or employee groups, contractor or employer groups, and the city administrator or consumer groups. The board of education bought a lot and decided that the value of a home to be built should be five thousand dollars. Then the architectural drawing class studied the site to determine the type of house which would fit the best, and submitted their plans to a committee of judges. A blueprint was made of the plan selected, and the house was begun by forty students under supervision. When the house was completed, the girls in the home problems class took the house over, cleaned it, studied it from the home decorator's point of view, furnished it, and opened it for inspection.